The Super Bowl of Vocal Music set for Feb. 7 in Napa
On the evening of Saturday, Feb. 7, the 20th annual Napa High School A Cappella Extravaganza will fill the house at Napa’s Uptown Theatre. One person, who will appear only briefly on stage to get the show going, has been leading the growth of the event for 14 years in a powerful way: by listening.
The man that will again be all ears is Napa High School Vocal Music Workshop Director Dave Ruane, who considers himself to be more of a “coach” than a traditional vocal music group director.
Thinking about the roles of traditional coaches, such as the NFL divisional championship winning guys who will be leading their teams in the Super Bowl on Feb. 8, leads to a refreshed view of Ruane’s role as a teacher and also as the producer of Extravaganza.
In traditional sports, coaches have diverse responsibilities. They must recruit players, set the culture of the team, strategize, establish expectations and discipline, oversee game plans and plays, decide upon roles and the development of players, represent the program and the team internally and to the public and make major game-changing decisions when the team is competing.
Ruane’s self-assessment is spot on; he doesn’t simply accompany or direct his students, he researches and plans the repertoire, teaches the singers by playing parts on the piano and vocally demonstrating, sets standards for the members of the group, plans and hosts preseason camps for the workshop each summer, secures performances for the group to both recruit and fundraise, sustains the group by applying for grants and seeking donors, and then organizes and helps his students produce the A Cappella Extravaganza each year.
More than a director, Ruane is indeed a coach.
For two decades, the Napa High School’s Vocal Music Workshop has been producing the Extravaganza, which brings together singers from three local Napa Valley public high schools and also features a professional headliner and “opening acts,” including semi-pro, and a cappella groups.
The format is a fully vocal, no instruments other than human voices create the music.
This year the line-up includes the professional group Six Appeal, the Stanford University Fleet Street Singers, the UC Berkeley Men’s Octet (which includes all genders), the UC Davis Cleftomaniacs, American Canyon High School’s PDA (Public Display of A Cappella), the Vintage High Vocal Music Workshop, all hosted by the Napa High Vocal Music Workshop.
Ruane reports that he has recently told the Napa High singers that on the day of Extravaganza, which has been nicknamed AcaEx, “We are all going to have a good time. I am not going to be chasing you down or become angry with any one of you. We’re going to do this together, and we’re all going to have a great day, because that’s what it’s about. We’re going to make an amazing memory.”
His role is to guide them to put in the work over the months leading up to AcaEx. If a student needs extra help to learn a part, he will record it and send it to them. He takes the group out onto the Napa High quad so that they have a large space to physically block out how they will perform each number. He encourages the students to give input, feedback and make suggestions, many of which are implemented. “So, I listen,” Ruane said.
New this year, is that Six Appeal, the professional group, has female members. “For years, I’ve been scouting groups to have more female representation because 75% of our choir program are women, and I think that they deserve being inspired as well,” Ruane said. “Not that they can’t be inspired by male performers, but it’s been very difficult to find a group that is at the level that I hire for this show, that our audience expects to see, that has women in it, and this year it finally happened, and I was so excited to see that with this group.
“I’m learning to listen. I’m learning that [the students] need to make it their own. They need ownership of the group, right? It’s all about ownership. It used to be that I was concerned about me getting judged for their performance, like I didn’t do a good enough job coaching or I didn’t rehearse some of it. Now I tell them that they are the ones out there performing. I will give you every ounce of energy I have at rehearsal. I will send you parts, whatever you need. I’m your resource, but if you’re not willing to put in the extra time, that’s reflection on you.”
He has advised his singers that it is his job to be their support, but also to teach them how to do it on their own. “They’ve really stepped forward this year, with ideas and some of the things we’re doing in the show.”
According to a long-standing tradition, everyone who sings in AcaEx also secures a seat in the house to enjoy and cheer on the other groups for free, learning from both the pros and their peers. Backstage at the Uptown Theatre is a tight space, with groups warming up in an outdoor greenroom, then moving on and off stage.
Ruane always has the goal of selling out, which will likely happen, because the proceeds are important. “The money we raise at Extravaganza is used specifically to continue the Napa High Vocal Music Workshop, as well as the group’s mission to expose local elementary schools to vocal music as part of education,” Ruane said.
In addition to performing at both public and private functions countywide, the singers also spend hours of personal time, including lunch hours and part of a class period up to eight times during the academic year, to travel to Napa elementary schools. There, they perform for the next generation of Napa High singers, many returning to the elementary school they attended, recruiting future singers and teaching them about music in a fun, relatable way.
Ruane himself attended West Park Elementary School, “At the end of our performance there each year, I get up and say that back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, I too was a student at West Park,” something the current student body loves to hear.
The A Cappella Extravaganza is set for Saturday, Feb. 7, at 7 p.m. at the Uptown Theatre in Napa. Tickets are $20 for students with ID and $35 for others and are available by visiting NapaChoir.org or UptownTheatreNapa.com.
Signature sponsors of the concert this year include Festival Napa Valley, The Edward L. Anderson Jr. Foundation and Storage Star Devlin Road.
